


Stray Melodies

by miihakeka



Series: the songs of angadur [3]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Drabble Collection, Gen, I Really Mean That Last One, Languages and Linguistics, Magitech, Musical References, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Valinor is not a perfect and happy place, Worldbuilding, prompt collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-03-31 13:15:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3979399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miihakeka/pseuds/miihakeka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snippets of Song that escaped from the whole. </p><p>//</p><p>I have a list of daily prompts, and each day I write a short thing for the songs 'verse based on the prompt. Those that I don't deem horribly spoilery, I will post in this collection fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Key to Tuning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Index of all chapters in the Stray Melodies collection.

1\. **Cinnamon** \-- Melkor, Fëanáro  
In which a common spice causes a slight contention in the workshop.

2\. **Green** \-- Kosomot, Melkor, Fankil  
In which Kosomot finds Valinor to be dazzlingly unusual in color and lighting.

3\. **Unexpected** \-- Halkja, Temori, Mallenu (Original Characters)  
In which Mordor surprises people by being just as nasty as expected.

4\. **Fruit** \-- Yavanna, Aulë, Nienna, Námo, Estë  
In which the Trees yield an unexpected gift for Yavanna.

5\. **Miss** \-- Tyelpë, Mairon -- one-sided Tyelpë/Mairon  
In which Tyelpë does not make use of a prime opportunity.

6\. **Electricity** \-- Melkor, Mairon -- Melkor/Mairon, established relationship (not the focus)  
In which Melkor tests one of Mairon's latest workings in a characteristically foolhardy manner.


	2. Cinnamon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt for May 19.

“Cinnamon,” said Melkor.

“Excuse me?” asked Fëanáro. He glanced around the workshop quickly, as though it were possible for things to have changed in the five minutes since he had last looked up. There was, predictably, no jar of the spice in sight. “What are you talking about?”

“Cinnamon,” repeated Melkor, snapping eir fingers, “is the dried inner bark of a plant that grows in wet, hot climates. Usually the sort that get annual rains, but you can emulate that in large enough caves if you get a good weather system going... anyway. My point is. Valinor is not nearly hot enough nor annually wet enough to support cinnamon trees. Yet you have cinnamon anyway.”

Fëanáro set down his tools and stared blankly at the vala. “Valinor gets plenty of rain, as far as I can tell. I really don’t see where you’re going with this, Melkor.”

“As the person in the room who hasn’t lived in Valinor for their whole life, let me tell you -- you haven’t seen rain until you’ve been to Ralian. But that isn’t actually going to convince you of Ralian’s existance or relative rainfall because I can’t present you with any evidence beyond my word, am I correct?” Fëanáro nodded, and Melkor continued. “Cinnamon, then, is evidence.”

“Evidence of the existance of a place called Ralian?” Fëanáro drawled. “Who’s to say that cinnamon even comes from a plant? You could be making that up, as well,” he said, pointing a finger at Melkor, to which the vala gave him a rather exasperated look.

“If you distrust my judgement so, you may as well go around asking where you can find cinnamon manufacturers.” Melkor drew eir arms around em, robes pooling in the corners of eir elbows, and leaned back against the workstation ey was seated at. “Please, go looking for farms or refineries anywhere in Valinor where cinnamon is processed.”

“Maybe I will,” Fëanáro challenged.

“Go on, then,” said Melkor. “I can wait.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cinnamon, in our world, grows primarily in tropical and subtropical climates. This au's version of Valinor exists in a locale that is mostly temperate, with only a thin band of subtropical climate between the temperate area and a huge swath of savannah to the south. Not wet, not always hot, not ideal for cinnamon.
> 
> I am a big believer in name accuracy. That is, the people in my tales refer to themselves by whatever name seems most solvent to them for themselves. The name 'Morgoth/Moringotto' hasn't yet been coined -- 'Fëanor' is the Sindarin version of Quenya 'Fëanáro', also not yet coined. I find it hard to believe that Fëanáro/Fëanor ever stopped thinking of himself as 'Fëanáro', either. Take it from someone who's been trying for three years to mentally drop their original legal name. Those things have sticking power.


	3. Green

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt for May 22.

The city on the horizon is full of light, darkness skidding around the outside of it like fire licking at rock. Kosomot doesn’t understand how this can be, how they can hoard so much light to fill an entire city so fully, saturating it to the very core. Ey cannot tear eir eyes away, even as they dock.

“Don’t stare,” amma1 says. Kosomot barely hears the admonishment and doesn’t look away from the crystals pulsing with light that stand, arrayed with vines, along the pale wood docks. How did they get light into a crystal? It isn’t phosphorescence, this much ey can tell. Ṭirrû2 Falu would be so excited to see these --

“I said, don’t stare!” A hand raps the back of Kosomot’s head, and the young ainu’s vision blurs for a moment. Ey blinks, and manages to turn away from the view.

“Amma...” ey whines.

Kosomot’s amma only looks at em, long black hair swept into loose braids, the empty spaces woven with iron-black, red-gold edged jewelry -- when did ey do eir hair? “I told you not to stare, and you didn’t listen to me.”

“Bu -- ” Kosomot clamps down on the protest. “Amma,” ey whispers instead, “where do they get all this light?! How do they -- ”

“Didn’t I tell you that Valinor was going to have more light than anywhere you’ve ever been before?”

“Well -- ” Kosomot falters. Ey _had_ said that before they had left. But ey hadn’t paid much attention to it, hadn’t really understood how different it would be. Kosomot has grown up in the dark of northwest Arda, a place where the splashes of light had not fallen in great quantity. No vast pools of underground glow there to be tapped, no underwater rivers spilling golden-white into the bays and estuaries to be dammed, no cascades of light down mountains into small oases of blinding brilliance. It is not anyone’s fault, just an accident of the creation of the world, that light had not landed anywhere near them in great quantity. They have merely the occasional stray droplet of light spilled in the air, sometimes enough of them gathering into something large enough to be a trickle down a hillside, a small puddle on the ground. Kosomot is used to the red light of fires, a warm glow kept in torches, not in crystals, and the rivers of lava flowing red to yellow to sometimes even white and blue that light the landscape in carefully-carved pathways.

Valinor is so... _glittering_ in comparison.

“...” Amma gestures helplessly with eir hands, a trail of slow, cold melody following the motion. “Well, now you see what I mean when I say Valinor is the foremost resource of light in the world.” Rings jangle on eir fingers, patterned with thin fingers of frost.

“It’s hurting my eyes,” Kosomot pouts.

“Well, then maybe you shouldn’t _stare_ at it!”

.oOo.oOo.

The injunction by eir amma makes a little bit more sense when Kosomot steps off the docks. Far away, the city of Valmar is a pleasant glow on the horizon. Close up, the light flies screaming through eir eyes, refracting off the internal crystalline structures with intensity that ey is neither familiar with nor prepared for. For a moment Kosomot shuts eir eyes against the onslaught, and unbidden thoughts of the droplets of light that sometimes stalk the regions of northeast Arda come to mind -- the way that the glossy black plants wither and gray in the path of those slowly creeping heralds of brilliance and destruction.

“Do you want a veil?” Fankil asks, touching Kosomot’s shoulder. “You’ll get used to adjusting after you’ve been here a few times, but a veil makes it easier.”

Kosomot shakes eir head, pushing the other ainu away. “I’m fine,” ey says. Eir eyes blink open. The light is still painful, but ey doesn’t look directly at any of the lamps. Instead, ey stares about the dock as they begin to move out.

“How do they keep their plants safe?” ey asks once they have started making their way into the city.

“Their plants?” Fankil repeats, blinking gem-encrusted eyes at em.

“You know how the plants at home die if even a small droplet of light goes by. The lamps here are so much brighter than that!”

Fankil smiles at em. “Well, why don’t you see for yourself?” And ey points off to one side of the road. Kosomot follows with eir gaze and blinks at the ground. Ey had thought it some kind of odd, outdoor carpeting at first -- it was a pleasant, dark green color, one that ey only ever saw in gemstones or dyed cloth. But now ey looks more closely, and sees patches of brown, occasional stones resting on the swath of green, and the whole thing looks much like the dark black mosses that cover the ground at home.

Tentatively Kosomot kneels in it, feels the spring of small leaves. It is, ey thinks with wonder -- it’s moss. It is _green_ moss.

“How -- ?” ey asks.

Behind em, Fankil shrugs. “I’ve never examined it too closely,” ey says. “There’s something about the green that makes it very tolerant to light, apparently. And it’s pleasing to look at once you get used to it, isn’t it?”

The trees in Valinor grow taller than any tree Kosomot has seen in eir homeland, their brilliant green leaves rivaling the bright gemstones ey’s come to think of as the pure examples of ‘green’. The ground is covered with mosses and wide ferns, small bushes and long, feathery-thin bladed leaves that rise directly from the soil. Brownish vines that remind em of the walls of Ṭurrina’s workshop crawl over the buildings, putting forth thick bunches of vibrant green leaves. The plants in Valinor grow up, not wide, and the entire country is tinged with green and glows under the dark, star-filled sky.

“You’re right,” ey says to Fankil when they return to the boat after they have walked much and eaten some food. “It is beautiful.”

______________

1'mother' in Ayan

2'aunt' or 'uncle' in Ayan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is where I unleash my inner linguist. I'm so, so very sorry.
> 
> Ayan is a language spoken by a species that doesn't have genders, or a conception thereof. Therefore, both _amma_ and _ṭirrû_ , referring to people as they do, can't be exactingly translated into English. I've picked 'mother' to translate _amma_ because it gives the more intimate semantics of the word much better than a slightly-more-accurate translation 'parent', and as opposed to 'father' because of logistics. By Ayan standards, an _amma_ refers to someone who physically gave birth. (It actually can't be the other way around, because songs 'verse ainur can have kids singlehandedly. Now is not the time to go into detail on the mechanics of that, however.)
> 
> _Ṭirrû_ is a similar story, except that in this case there is no gender-neutral English translation, issues of intimacy semantics aside. You could also translate it as 'auncle' or 'nini' or any of the gender-neutral variants that have been proposed for this particular word-pair.


	4. Unexpected

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edit Log:
> 
> 2015 August 30: All instances of 'Halkja' changed to 'Halkya'.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt for May 23.

Halkya glances uneasily to the mountains at their right. They seem to loom in eir vision, dark and imposing and spiked with a promise of pain. “Are you sure we should be passing so close to Mordor?”

Temori fakes a yawning sound. “Everything will be fine so long as nobody crosses the border,” ey says, shaking eir head. “It’s not exactly an _easy_ thing to do, this side of the country.”

Halkya takes another glancing look at the looming peaks of the Ephel Duath. “I suppose,” ey mutters. It’s not as though they’re going to actually try to go any nearer the base of the mountains, either. Ey supposes -- hopes, really -- that that will make it an acceptable route to the inhabitants. There are stories about how the Nation of Iron once sank a whole plain into a morass of molten rock just to kill a single elf. Halkya thinks ey can be forgiven for being a bit skittish so close to their border.

Mallenu makes a disgusted sound and yanks on a lock of Halkya’s hair. “Stop acting so nervous,” ey scolds. “You’re lucky I let you come on this trip. Don’t make me wish I’d left you in Chey Sart.”

Ey almost, almost retorts that ey wishes ey _had_ been left home. Time away from ‘amma’ Mallenu would be a treat. But of course the world can never work in Halkya’s favor. That’s just how being a thirdborn is. Ey manages to restrain emself, and continues with the line of Temori’s comments instead. “What about when we’re coming back? Won’t they notice that we’re... well -- ”

“Doing something illegal?” Mallenu snorts. Temori laughs, and Halkya hunches over defensively.

“Yeah,” ey bites out. “Won’t Mordor notice? I can’t imagine they’d be happy about it. Valinor either.”

“I think,” says Temori, “that you’d be surprised. Mordor doesn’t tend to get off-beat over things that happen outside their borders and don’t affect them negatively. And I _guarantee _you, Valinor doesn’t even _notice_ this place anymore.”__

“Tuneless rabble,” Mallenu mutters.

Halkya refrains from commenting for the rest of the day. Well, mostly. Ey lasts until they’ve made camp for the night, and ey tries not to, but when ey sees it, ey can’t hold back.

“Discord!” ey screams, stumbling backwards and falling to the dusty ground.

“Halkya, what in the name of all the Songs -- ”

“Th-there -- ” Halkya starts, swallows, tries again. With a trembling arm ey points at the object of eir attention. “There’s -- someone on the cliff. There.”

The other two make their way to where Halkya sits on the ground, still stunned into motionlessness. Halkya cannot stop pointing, nor staring, for there on the blackened mountain there is splayed the shape of a person. The spectacle is far away, but the trio is close to the mountain’s base, and the person is hung close enough to the ground to be seen easily even from this distance. Gouges in the cliff wall that seemed random now take on a more sinister pattern in Halkya’s sight, decorative whorls almost jarringly graceful leading into two large, slowly curving lines that join at either end, bowed away from each other, and in the center two smaller curving bows of line. The shape of a stylized eye is gouged upon the cliff face, and the person is hung in the center where the pupil ought to be.

Temori whistles. “Well, that’s a crescendo if ever I saw one."

Mallenu reaches down and roughly pulls Halkya to eir feet. “Looks like the rumors are true, then.” Ey pauses, contemplative for a moment. “You know, I shouldn’t be surprised, considering it’s Mordor, but I am anyway.”

“Sounds like one of the things they make up to try and convince you not to mess with them, right?”

“They hang people from cliffs,” Halkya chokes out. Eir voice is almost a whisper in eir throat. “ _People_ \-- ”

“I’m not sure that’s a real person,” says Mallenu. “Whoever was in that body, they probably took them out and put them in a new one before they hung it up.”

Halkya shudders at the thought of being forcibly discorporated. “That’s still absolutely horrible,” ey says.

“That’s Mordor for you,” says Temori merrily. “Come on, I’ve got food going. If you two would rather stare at the Mordorian warning sign, let me know so I can eat it all.”

“Who are they?” Halkya wonders as Temori glides away.

“Valinorean,” Mallenu says, and Halkya jumps. Ey hadn’t meant to say that aloud.

“Valinorean?” ey asks. “How can you tell?”

Mallenu points towards the figure. “Clothes. They’re not Mordorian style, and they look like something you’d wear underneath armor. Plus, I think I can see the Seal of Valinor on the chest. It’s kind of faded, though.”

“How can you possibly see all that from here?!”

Halkya’s amil1 taps eir temple. “Extra money, better eyes,” ey says.

“I’d love to have eyes that good,” Halkya says, turning away in disgust. “You couldn’t spend that on _my_ fâna 2?” Ey can’t resist the dig.

“Well then, little haidezh3,” Mallenu sneers, “if you still want eyes that nice when we get back from this lovely venture, I’m sure I can arrange for _some_ of the money to go to you.” Abruptly ey shouts, a hand cupped around eir mouth. “Hey, Valinorean cliff decoration! You think I should spend money and get Halkya better eyes when ey’s such a rude child?”

“You -- ” Halkya is about to shove eir amil, consequences be as disharmonious as they wish, but --

\-- the figure upon the cliff twitches, a spasm of motion that travels through their whole body.

Halkya does not have enough breath to scream.

“Huh,” says Mallenu from behind em. “Guess I spoke too soon about ‘not being real’.”

______________________

1a formal and less intimate variant of Ayan _amma_ 'mother'

2'body' in Ayan

3'lord, master, royalty' in Ayan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case you were starting to think that Mordor was nice. The Iron Nation's 'hanging people from cliffs' tendencies have a long and glorious history dating all the way back to the first age -- Maedhros was one of the trendsetters.
> 
> If Chey Sart sounds unfamiliar, it should -- it's tenuously canon at best. In the songs 'verse it exists directly east and slightly south of Khand, behind a range of mountains known as the Ered Harmel.
> 
> If nobody's yet noticed, I don't feel bad telling you that these characters are ainur. I figure that, as a species that's so based around song and music, most of their swears and exclamations and many of their figures of speech would make use of musical terminology. I would feel much worse about this prospect if I didn't have a musical background -- thankfully I've played an instrument for most of my life and I know enough to get by.


	5. Fruit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt for May 24.

In Valinor, there are two trees. One is pale of bark and silver-green of leaf, its trunk notched and gnarled, looking more like a tangle of thickened vines wound around one another than a single solid trunk. Delicately petaled flowers cluster on the tips of its branches, wavering softly in the breeze. Silvered light gathers in their centers, gathering in heavy drips upon the tips of their petals, and thin lines of the same light flow down the many grooves in its trunk. The other has a think, sturdy trunk of rich brown, green and golden-edged leaves glinting against the dark sky. The branches burst with flowers of robust petal, bright yellow and deep orange and amber, and down the trunk seeps golden sap, lit and glittering as gold dust, and from the base of each flower wells a similar flow.

The earth around the trees is still furrowed and gouged from their making, and there is a figure lying there draped in green and yellow and red, another veiled and garbed in dark silver-grays kneeling beside.

“Yavanna!”

The shout comes not from the kneeling figure, but from one of the number who come sprinting over the hill to behold the churned earth and the two figures, sitting below the trees bathed in the gentle cascade of their light. In eir hurry the shouter nearly stumbles upon eir long, trailing over-robe, but just as soon it is shucked from eir person and tossed unceremoniously to a shorter figure running alongside. Finally ey reaches the two figures and ey falls to eir knees, gathering up the green, yellow, and red-garbed one. “Yavanna!” ey cries again.

The veiled figure reaches a hand towards the pair, movements sporadic and wobbly. “I -- you needn’t worry, ey’s alive. I can still hear em, we’re still -- ”

Another runner reaches them then, falls to eir knees by the veiled figure and grasps eir shoulders. “Nienna, what were you _thinking_?!” Eir hood, normally so immaculately placed, is cast aside now, revealing eir long black hair. “Creating is all well and good but something so large and complex? And you told nobody where you were going or what you were attempting, what if you and Yavanna had exhausted yourselves more than expected, what if your songs had synced too well -- how were you expecting to be helped?”

“It matters not, speak on this later!” cries the other, rising with Yavanna cradled in eir arms. “They both require medical attention. Curumo!” The short figure bearing eir discarded robe snaps to attention. “Run back to the settlements and locate the nearest healer, tell them to prepare to receive us, and when you have done that go straight to the main healer’s guild and fetch Estë back to that healer’s building. Go!” And the figure, so named Curumo, scurries away towards the buildings that are scattered along the horizon. Soon the bearer of Yavanna starts after em, and sooner after that two figures, one still without hood, aid Nienna in the same direction. Some of the rest follow, contributing to the miniature procession, but most remain.

.oOo.oOo.

Estë strides from the healing chamber, stripping the medical bindings from eir forearms. Nienna follows em, less wobbly now, but divested of much of eir raiment. Estë directs eir attention to Námo, and to the other inhabitant of the room, who has leapt to eir feet at eir appearance. “Lord Aulë, please wait. I have only a few words to speak to Lord Námo and then I will speak to you.”

Aulë retakes eir seat, face grim with frustration. Námo embraces Nienna and tilts an eager ear towards Estë as ey recites: “No singing whatsoever, lots of rest, please try to arrange to bask in all your aspects during the resting periods. You will be fine, but you need to avoid further exertion or you will make yourself worse. I will see you again in six sleep-wake cycles, Lord Nienna.”

They nod as one, and turn to go. Estë sighs and rubs a hand across eir eyes, before turning back to Aulë, who stands again.

“Well?” ey speaks before Estë can open eir mouth. “Will ey live? Why does ey not come out with Nienna?”

“Ey is unconscious, and shows more acute exhaustion than Lord Nienna by far.” Estë tries to breathe through eir nose to calm emself. “Further, the injuries to eir aspectual integrity were... nearly fatal.” Ey rushes onward before Aulë can interrupt. “However, with the advanced medical technology such as Valinor has and such as I can provide, and with quick treatment, Lord Yavanna is no longer in any danger. But ey will require a long period of convalescence.”

“But ey will live?” Aulë squints at Estë, taking a step closer, as though this will help em detect any potential obscurations of the truth.

“Yes, ey will live.”

“Good,” ey mutters. “That is good.” Aulë slumps, shoulders and spine no longer tense. “May I see em?”

“Not yet,” Estë replies, shaking eir head. “I have set up an aspect-basker subtone environment for em, and your aspect complexes are very different than Lord Yavanna’s, Lord Aulë. You would upset the harmonial balance should you enter, even wearing blockers.”

“... Very well,” Aulë mutters. “I will be informed of any changes that occur,” ey orders.

“Of course you shall. Would you wish to designate a mayâ1 specifically for the task, or shall I choose apprentices as messengers at my discretion?”

“I will send one of my halamayâ2 along after I have next slept. You may make use of them as you see fit until Yavanna is healthy.”

Finally, Aulë turns to go, but now it is Estë who protests. “... Lord Aulë, wait please. There is one other thing.”

Aulë turns, eir glare piercing the air, as sharp as an embroidery needle. “You would withhold information from me?” Eir voice is low.

Estë holds eye contact and wills eir spine not to bend. “It is not exactly... usual to speak of these things with anyone but the patient,” ey admits. “But I do not think Lord Yavanna will awake before it is too late to make the necessary decision and you are eir partner, Lord Aulë. You know em well. You are the only person of whom I can ask this.”

“You said ey was going to be well. What further decisions can possibly be necessary?” Aulë snaps.

“Lord Aulë, surely you remember the Solike-Akayu scandal of three seasons past?”

Aulë blinks. Then ey sits emself down, leaning slowly against the back of the chair. “You cannot mean it,” ey says.

“I do mean it,” Estë says seriously. “The strain on Lord Yavanna was intense, and would have been fatal but for this local healing hall; yet though I came from Valmar as quickly as I could, the settlement healer is not familiar with genesis prevention. I have found almost no large shards of aspect in the wounds, and eir hum is erratic, but only in a single set of notes from a certain melody.

“I am fairly certain that this event has rendered for Lord Yavanna a child.”

.oOo.oOo.

Just past the western gates of Valmar, citizens of all walks of life now stand, captivated by the trees which have burst from the hill -- the glorious, illuminated fruit of Yavanna and Nienna’s song.

________

1Valinorean Ayan original word for later Quenyan 'maia'

2a subcaste of maiar that directly serve and personally interact with a vala, from Valinorean Ayan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I must make a note about the language use in this prompt. (Prepare to experience linguistics.)
> 
> I've placed all my terms in Quenya, with the exception of 'mayâ' and 'halamayâ', which hail from Ayan -- strictly speaking, from Valinorean Ayan, since they're Valinor-specific cultural terms. It would be far more appropriate for me to be using Valinorean Ayan exclusively for things like cultural terms, terms of address (each instance of 'Lord'), and for the names of each character, which are here in their Quenya forms and not the Ayan forms. Generally this is because I haven't finished developing Ayan properly (oops sorry), so I just don't know what Yavanna or Estë's real name is. For many of the Valar their Quenyan names aren't even translations of their canon-Valarin names in my source material, nor borrowings, which makes figuring out their actual Ayan names in Songs'verse really, really difficult. Eventually I'll be replacing everything here with the proper Ayan terminology.
> 
> So why is Estë calling everyone 'Lord' and nobody else seems to be doing it? Well, don't worry, I have a reason.
> 
> Here is the first thing to understand about the Valinor of Songs'verse: Valinorean society functions under the sway of a highly developed caste system. There are two main over-castes, 'Vala' and 'Maia'. I'm not going to speak on the main functional difference between these large castes yet, because spoilers. Suffice to say that there are multiple sub-castes to each large caste. Of these, one such division is between the 'Arata' caste (which is called Mâkhana in Valinorean Ayan). Mâkhana is the most prestigious caste of the various Vala castes, and this affects how people talk to one another. Aulë, Námo, Yavanna, and Nienna are all Mâkhanuma (the plural of Mâkhana). Estë is not Mâkhana, so despite being in a high-prestige Vala caste emself, ey addresses each of them more respectfully than they themselves are required to address their fellow caste-members.
> 
> Translating this honorific as plain 'Lord' is a bit misleading, because it loses much of the complexity of the actual Valinorean Ayan honorific system (which is huge and sprawling and full of different terms depending on who you're addressing and what both of your castes are), but there's no other good options for translation. So I'm stuck with 'Lord' until future notice.
> 
> For a little bit of further context on the halamayâ -- Mairon was once of the halamayâ caste, in Aulë's service.


	6. Miss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt for June 1.

The battle in the courtyard is covered in song. It is getting in his ears, catching on his arms, bogging down his feet. He feels himself move slowly, yet feels graceful still, like one of the Sinda dancers who come to the city in in caravans sometimes. He cannot tell if the gracefulness is a truth, or a fiction manufactured by the vainer side of his mind.

He is not sure if it matters.

There is a figure in the courtyard. _Sauron_. A monster of glimmering black iron and reddish flame and cinders and ash, leaking across the cobblestones, seeping like poison into the ground, even as beautiful music leaps from his ribs and trickles through the joints of his armor, wavering trills and glittering crescendoes gathering together into a whirlwind of mock fire and lava that dances through the courtyard, stray notes flying out to strike at the elven soldiers who dare to get too close.

Tyelpë suspects that nobody else can hear the music, nor sense what they are being struck by. Why their bodies are suddenly aflame.

He wishes he could not hear, either. He wishes he could remain ignorant, he wishes he did not have to _know_ \--

 _‘Ai, Anatal,’_ he had said when he was drunk, it seems years ago. _‘You know not how much I love you. I wish I could show you, but I cannot make music; I am a blacksmith like my father and my grandfather, and not a musician...’_

\-- but. There it is.

Another group of guards swarms in, and their armor begins to melt while still upon their bodies. Their screams mix with the song, a long line of notes wrapping around their sound and coddling it. Tyelpë is not more than halfway toward the center of the courtyard.

Sauron swivels on his heel, knives shifting position in hand as he faces the guards who survived the initial heat wave. The air is hot. A high-pitched keen sails through the air and punches Tyelpë’s ears. The guards surge forward, suddenly unorganized. Sauron spins.

Tyelpë can feel the notes that will endanger him before they reach his flesh, and he dodges them easily enough. He does not know if Sauron has noticed him yet, or if he is being taunted, led closer like a chicken to the feed, only to be eventually crushed in his ignorance. (But has he not already been crushed by it?)

Sauron’s back is undefended. All his attention is on the last straggler of the guards.

It would be so simple, and yet --

_‘Ai, Anatal -- ’_

\-- he does not move.

The guard shouts something. Perhaps it was his name. The last part did sound a bit like ‘Celebrimbor’, he supposes. Tyelpë can barely hear anything but the music in his ears, pounding through his heart, echoing within his ribcage, filling his lungs like water. He breathes it in.

Sauron swivels again, the music intensifies, and Tyelpë’s feet are knocked out from under him with a simple sweep of an armored leg. The music swells again, and an intricate web of harmony sweeps through Tyelpë’s body.

Before he hits the ground, he feels as though he is suspended in an endless sea of fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Has anyone noticed all the music-related themes in this 'verse yet? I'm not sure if I'm exaggerating them enough.
> 
> I love Tyelpë. He gets the shortest stick ever. But who's Anatal? Well...
> 
> I think I may be the only person in the universe with this opinion, but the adoption of the name 'Annatar' by Mairon makes _no sense_ to me. You're in Middle-Earth, going around trying to get elves to trust you, but you're calling yourself basically the equivalent of 'Lord of Gifts' in Latin -- except for the fact that most elves _still speak_ Latin (ie. Quenya), or at least understand it. It comes off as the most pretentious thing ever and it makes absolutely no sense to me, as someone who would be instantly suspicious of someone who called themself 'Lord of Gifts' and could give no other name. I can't imagine that Sauron would be that blind as to ignore the fact that the name 'Annatar' itself is inherently suspicious, but, I dunno, maybe canon Sauron was really that much of a self-aggrandizer. (Ugh.) But Mairon's character in Songs'verse is not given to weird stunts like that, so I fixed it.
> 
>  _Anatal_ is actually Ayan 'creation'. It was chosen simply happens to sound similar enough to Quenyan 'Annatar' to put the elves hearing it in mind of the meaning of 'Annatar' without actually being that blatantly obvious. This sort of thing is something I could much more easily see Sauron doing, and so I've given it to Mairon in this verse.


	7. Electricity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt for July 27.

“I am still of the opinion that this idea is... ridiculous.”

Melkor laughs, the joyous, almost manic (but not quite) laugh that very often has the small party of thrill-seekers of the army’s higher ranks perking up and looking around, and everyone else wondering desperately whether it’s too late to run for cover. Mairon grimaces as ey finishes affixing the leather straps to the ends of the bracers. They are darkest black, gathering all the light that hits them and reflecting it only in a single intense arc that cuts through the air. Serrated ridges with engraved note-ports line the back side, and a wickedly pointed hand guard hides a slot for a small knife (yet to be forged -- Mairon has no urge to encourage this any further than it has been), should Melkor wish one. The red-haired ainu holds the pair up.

“Well, there they are,” ey says, sighing in defeat. “I can personally attest to the viability of everything but the channeling lines, since that isn’t my specialty, but Wešuren said -- ” And Melkor has snatched them from eir hands, examining them with a keen glint in eir reddish brown eyes. “... Alright, fine, or I could just leave the documentation on your desk and you can never bother to look at it. That works too.” Mairon pinches the bridge of eir nose, brows furrowed, and waits while Melkor tries the two armored bracers on.

“These are _excellent_ ,” Melkor says, grinning widely at the shorter ainu. Ey flexes eir fingers experimentally, the leather-hide gloves creaking at the movement -- too new to be flexible.

Mairon gazes back at em. “I really hope that you’re not going to -- actually, wait, never mind. I explicitly _ban_ you from testing those in my forge -- ”

Eir words cut off sharply as Melkor leans in and presses a kiss against eir forehead. “Thank you, Mairon,” ey says.

“... Ah,” Mairon murmurs. Eir cheeks redden, only barely noticeable through the mess of freckles on eir skin. A smile creeps its way onto eir face, and eir eyes soften. “You’re welcome, minamru1.” Then eir back straightens again, and eir eyes glint dangerously. “Don’t think that gets you off the hook! I won’t have you testing that in here!”

“Oh, I would never,” Melkor says airily. “Come on!” Ey tosses eir braid over eir shoulder and begins to walk to the door, tugging Mairon with em.

“No, no wait! I didn’t say I wanted to come!”

.oOo.oOo.

A storm is brewing by the time the pair reaches the surface of the underground city, having collected a small but interested crowd of hangers-on as they went. White particles of ice and snow blow back and forth in the wind, reflecting tiny bolts of whatever small, silvered light they can gather from the stars.

Mairon huffs, breath curling into a cloud of steam as it exits eir mouth, and pulls the fur-lined cloak tighter around emself. “Did you do this?” ey demands of Melkor, gesturing at the darkening sky.

“Actually, no. But it’s perfect -- I can easily turn this into a thunderstorm,” Melkor replies, making an expansive gesture up at the sky. Ey begins to clamber up onto a rocky outcropping covered with ice, not seeming to notice how slippery this ought to be.

“If you make it rain I’m going back inside.”

Melkor turns back from eir position halfway up the outcropping and frowns down at Mairon. Ice is creeping up eir legs, frosting delicate patterns onto the hem of eir robe. “You know I wouldn’t do that,” ey says. “Besides, it’s already snowing, so it’s probably going to stay cold. But I’ll make sure it doesn’t unfreeze, okay?”

Mairon snorts. “No rain for my sake, and yet you’re still going to be trying to summon a lightning bolt?”

“ _Mairon_... you’re a rušaya 2! You’re one of the only aspect sets that can actually handle lightning without having it!” Melkor teeters dangerously on the rock for a moment, before ey finally rights emself, and finishes bounding all the way to the top. “Though actually, speaking of. Tell everyone else they should probably stand back a ways? Especially the elves.” A low rumbling from the sky punctuates eir words.

The red-headed ainu moves back toward the small crowd almost immediately, as though ey were simply waiting to be asked. As ey speaks to them and begins to slowly herd them away from the rock, Melkor stares up at the sky, head tipped back. Eir long, black hair flutters in the wind.

Ey starts to sing.

The thunder increases, clouds roiling in tune with the notes that fly from the ainu standing on the rock. Soon enough the winds pick up, snow surging this way and that in the air as lightning begins to arc overhead. The harmonies in Melkor’s voices begin to intensify, crescendoing slowly up.

Then ey stretches an arm up towards the sky, and a single bolt of lighting spirals down to strike em, enveloping eir body. The ice goes up in a cloud of steam as it hits, though the ainu doesn’t seem at all injured by the incredible heat. Some of the elves in the crowd gasp, but for the most part the ainur simply watch. Even Mairon does not blink. Soon the lightning dissipates -- or, it mostly dissipates, the long, thin bolt withdrawing back up into the sky and leaving behind a certain dark-haired ainu wearing bracers that simply _hum_ with arcing, crackling electricity. Melkor wheels around on eir heel on the half-melted rock, and with a toss of eir arm ey sends another bolt crackling from the bracers out across the fields of ice above Utumna. A deep cracking, grinding sound results, and a crest of ice collapses in upon itself where the bolt struck.

Hair flying in the wind and studded with ice, Melkor laughs wildly, captured lightning sizzling over eir skin.

________

1 An Ayan phrase that can be variously translated, most often interpreted as meaning 'my love' or 'dear'.

2 'fire-spirit' in Ayan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm with Mairon on this one -- Melkor is a bit ridiculous, no? And yes, they're in a relationship. Can you guess what my favorite Tolkien-verse ship is? 
> 
> And here we go with the name notes again. Isn't it Utumno, not Utumna? Well, yes, and also no. The naming of that particular place -- actually of a lot of Tolkien's places and characters -- depends on which version of the legendarium you've decided to pull your source information from. To be fair, a lot of people haven't read the Histories, just the Silm, and it's pretty much exclusively _Utumno_ in the Silm. Unfortunately for you lot, I'm a linguist who's read the Histories.
> 
> Firstly, I would expect Melkor's first underground citadel to be named in Ayan in songs'verse, considering that at that time Ayan is all _anyone_ would speak. If our only options are _Utumna_ and _Utumno_ , _Utumna_ fits the sound commonalities of Ayan more closely than _Utumno_ does. I take all my guidance on sound commonality in Ayan from what little canon we have on Valarin -- sound commonality here meaning 'which sounds does a language prefer and therefore appear more' -- and what we have on Valarin shows that they were an uncanny degree of _huge_ on the vowel 'a' and not so much on any other vowel ever. Therefore I've selected it to be called Utumna.


End file.
